Episode #549: Growing an Industry Newsletter-Ed Hertzman's Path from Sourcing to Athletech News

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1:00 Go get them. This is Pete Moore at Hilo Talks NYC. I have the pleasure of bringing on a fellow New Yorker, Upritty Snyder, Ed Hertzmann, Athlete Tech News. We are partnering with them in several fronts. We're really excited about where he's taking this because we're taking the events, and we're basically putting it on legal steroids. So, Ed, welcome to the Halo sector, and thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me, Pete. Awesome. So, look, you worked in some other different industries that have kind of pivoted here recently, which was a nice refreshing, dose of, enthusiasm from our standpoint. So talk about where you were before, what opportunities you you uncovered and executed on, and why you said, hey. I should do this in the Halo sector.

1:45 So, you know, I was a supply chain guy. You know, I've told this this this story a couple of times, and it's partly serendipitous and part of it maybe just be at the right place at the right time. But supply chain guy who went 02/2009, there was a cotton crisis, and no one really knew what was going on. I was frustrated. I was 26. None of my buyers really wanted to accept that if they didn't place an order on a Monday, by Tuesday, there'd be an upcharge. So I'm like, where's the Wall Street Journal of supply chain? So I started this thing called sourcing journal. Never did I think that it would have, you know, morphed into this substantial business and a thorn in some of the more traditional media publications out there. So I ended up selling that to Penske Media Group, and, you know, they gave us such credibility. They gave us, you know, obviously, a financial you know, a lot of credit that was much needed. And, more importantly, they taught me really about how some of these big media companies operate, especially on the b two b side. I got exposed to the billboard and the varieties, etcetera, etcetera. And that was really the inspiration. Like, okay. Every single industry has their publication or record. I remember sitting in Vegas. This is this is not owned by by Penske, but I was sitting at at a table and, oh, what are you guys doing here? They were here for a pizza conference. And there was, like, 10,000 pepperoni salesman.

3:00 And there was a pizza magazine and pizza this. I'm like, I'm always looking for the white space. I'm looking for the underserved community that that maybe, you know, maybe it's not the biggest the biggest business necessarily, but it's but it's it's but it's real business, and and they're looking for a home. And I just thought there was such a convergence between technology, finance, fitness, wellness, all this stuff going on. And the players that were out there at the time just weren't it's almost like Tower Records. Right? Like, there were great businesses, but you can't sell DVDs in the streaming market. And the market was moving to streaming, and everyone else was selling DVDs. So okay. Let's let's create the, the, you know, the I the iPod or iPad, whatever the hell it was called. And and that was really it. I mean and the rest is history.

3:45 Yep. So she'd been doing this I mean, we we got on your radar screen probably about two years ago. And I've know it kinda started out, you know, you know, more as a as a newsletter. And now you've kinda moved it into two events, and now you're kinda going big. So could you just kinda highlight those points? Because I think people sometimes start a business, and they kinda say, hey. Let me go and do this event that we're gonna talk about that you're doing in in, you know, in New York City with with some big hitters and kinda reframing what the event should be and what people getting out of it. But it was kinda nice to start here, you know, and then be able to say, hey. You know who I am, and I'm gonna get to here. Look. You know, overnight success, it could be ten years. You know? For the first two years, I was emailing myself, and no one really cared about what I was doing or who I was, but I saw a steady growth and growth and growth, and people would, hey. Can you feature us? Hey. Can you write about us? Oh, can we average? Woah. And so, you know, how many times I wanted to give up on this thing? You know, I was I was a president of a division. I had a great income, and I would go home at night and and post stories and load them into Mailchimp. I was kinda going back to the 26 year old self, you know, starting Yeah. Sourcing journal. And so but it was it was progress compounds as long as I kept seeing that list go up and the feedback increase. And then I had to make a decision, and that's a very, very hard decision. And I realized that, what do they say? You can't dance at two weddings. Right? So so I knew that I needed to go all in, and I knew that I had to not not just have the a very clear vision of or the goal, but what was

5:18 I willing to sacrifice? So I knew that I was gonna take a couple years of of of hardship necessarily before I would get to a place where this would even be considered a business and not, you know, just a just. And the last two years has really transfer trans transformative. I mean, we started 02/20, what, '4 with 50,000 subscribers, ended the year with over a hundred thousand. And I had the intention of doing an event in '24. And I will tell you, I remember being out there looking at venues, and it was a movie. I I think it was called Chasing Bobby Fischer or something like that. Yep. And there was a line in the movie. Don't move it till you could see it. Don't move it till you could see it. And I said, you know what? I don't think we're ready yet. I don't have in my phone 50, a hundred CEOs that I could put on auto dial or speed dial and say, hey. Do me a solid and come. And I and I knew that I was gonna introduce an event to the market.

6:11 I wanted to solve the problem or solve what the you hear the same feedback. Oh, there's the same speakers. There's too much pay to play. There's not enough brands. There's too many vendors. The production quality, outside voices. So if I'm gonna sit there and say, okay. I can do that. I gotta make sure I could deliver on that. And I thought it was better to wait, a year or eighteen months and really get ready and then go all in when I felt more comfortable. Although that meant there was revenue that I was leaving on the table, events is a is a big part of the media company. It's where a lot of media companies actually make it make make their their their money for the year. But I said, let's keep building the reputation. Let's keep building the name. One of the one of the things that I think a lot of people do wrong in business in general is they call them the favors too early. They overpromote too early, and then you lose the you lose your customer's trust.

7:06 This is Pete Moore. I wanna let you in on a little secret. There's this company called Promotion Vault, and what they do is they give out rewards from retailers that allow you to incentivize your members without having to do zero down and one month free or giving away shakes or giving away T shirts. What you wanna do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the deal. There's something called rewards vault. The rewards vault is going to allow a member to set up their own profile. They are going to answer questions. You are gonna get those answers. You're gonna be able to target those members, and you're gonna reward them inside your club, inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside of the spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their monthly dues, and to be rewarded properly for the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be. Promotion Vault's your answer. Trust me. This is real.

8:10 So on some of the newsletters that you're putting out, you know, you're featuring technology. You're talking about deals. There's a financial component to it. Is is that distribution of your, you know, audience right now, are they consuming all components of it? Because this industry somehow sometimes very siloed between, like, who the executive is and, like, what information they actually know or care about or obviously should know all of it. But Well, look. I think what we're doing today and what what the vision I see for this in the future is gonna be slightly different. Right now, you know, we have that that general news call or email that goes out every single day. And I think it's kind of the top stories that the industry kinda if you're an executive across the board, probably about 50% of that's gonna pertain to you. Obviously, some stories are gonna lean more to finance, are gonna be loaned into training, or more into wellness. But if I'm an executive running x, y, and z company, here is something that gives me enough information to so that I can be intelligent, informed on what's going on, and could speak to to the industry in the in the industry news. Do I see a world where we have newsletters catered to the CEO, the CTO, the CMO, the the wellness executive, the longevity, the enthusiast. Absolutely. That also allows you to get more more granular in your content, but also from an advertising perspective, your advertisers can now be more targeted and get exactly who they want. About

9:41 60% of who we currently have as subscribers are what I would say are the owner and operators. You know? So that's the largest cohort. Now, again, statistics are skewed, and you know this better than anybody. What is there? 500 top m and a, PE analysts in this space. So what percentage of my list can that be? It's gonna be very small. So I do I think we are talking to them? Absolutely. How is that going to be as a percentage when compared to operators? It's gonna be smaller. Yeah. Sure. The service providers, the equipment companies, all of that is changing. But I think what's interesting and what I'm seeing is the nontraditional players are are starting to subscribe and become part of the conversation. What I mean by that is fitness is not just a full wall gym and a treadmill.

10:29 You know? There is, you know, like, we have the head of, wellness at Chase Travel joining us at our event. Travel now, you know, twenty years ago when we we went on a vacation, is it in a free buffet, and is there maybe a, you know, a pool? Now people are really is is there a fitness facility? And a fitness facility doesn't mean weights and a treadmill. People wanna know is there recovery options, you know, what type of equipment do the gyms have. So now if you're in the hospitality sector, you have to rethink what it means to be to have fitness and wellness as an amenity. Is that a new generator? Is that a cost center? Etcetera, etcetera. So but how do we bring in the people that are making these decisions or hear the data on a day to day basis? I always say that if you wanna talk about wellness trends, how do we bring in some of the social media giants who are who have billions of data points who really know what the Gen z's are searching for every single day? Yeah. So I think that we're starting to see non endemic players consume this content, which is really, really encouraging.

11:33 You're seeing innovation, happen at at at large scale companies that never played in wellness per se. These venture studios are popping up. So there's a lot of momentum, and we have to almost I know you guys call it halo, and I and I and I love that you guys are doing that because I don't think there is a term that probably encompasses the fitness, the wellness, the health, the longevity, the recovery. Exactly. I mean, that's that's what happened basically eight years ago. I kept telling people I'm a health and wellness banker, and I hated using the term wellness. And I could I it's just I never get an awesome wellness idea that ever hit my desk. Okay? Ever. And, and I'm like, well, where's this word come from? You probably don't even know, but I'll tell you now. So back in the fifties, there was a guy named doctor Halbert Dunn who worked at the Mayo Clinic. He was a biostatistician.

12:24 He was looking at all the data, seeing that people get sick, and basically came up with the antonym of illness. So if you're not sick, you're okay. Right? That's basically what wellness means. Like, you're okay. You're not sick. Right? Not very aspirational for anybody who works in this industry such as you and we're passionate about getting people results. So I literally woke up at 03:00 in the morning. I'm like, shit dude, the word halo, the acronym health, active lifestyle, and outdoors. Right? It kinda compasses a resort. Right? That's outdoor activity. I wanna live an active lifestyle. Health. Alright. I gotta list data in science. Well, it should be preventative health, not just like I mean, like, the sick continuum of, like, how I might be able to get better. So we'd love you to to to embrace the term. I'm going all in on it. Obviously, I do a halo academy, which you know about. Mhmm. Got the halo talks. And I'm trying to basically tell all these companies, you are part of the halo sector.

13:16 Now you have to jump in because everybody who is an enthusiast in enthusiast in this industry is is is one of your potential, you know, revenue streams, dispensable, you know, disposable income available, and they travel. They're on the move all the time. So I appreciate you bringing that up as it relates to, like, what you're doing and your broader vision. I think it's very smart because I I think that that we're all struggling to figure out, you know, how do we identify the sector? Because if you use fitness, it's almost limiting, and it's almost has, like, a negative connotation. If you say health, well, we're not talking about hip replacements and and dialysis. You know? Right. So so what is the intersection of all this? And there's one other thing I'll add, and and you'll probably appreciate this as as, you know, as as a former banker is that what the other major Or current or current, unfortunately. Current. Sorry. Unfortunately.

14:06 What I think was missing from most of the conversations that I saw on the outside was there was no lack of enthusiasm. There was no lack of ideas. There was no lack of passion in this industry. There was a lack of commentary and analysis on, which is what you guys do, on the deals that are happening. So I'm always interested, like, okay. This is a good product. Like, this this is not my favorite cup of coffee, but Starbucks has has a pretty sizable business. You know what I mean? Like, Schultz was able to really take an idea and scale it globally. And people study this. These are these are case studies. People wanna understand what separates this from from the individual that has three or four locations and can't get back can't get past their neighborhood coffee shop. What processes has he been able to place? What challenges has they had? What when did they introduce food or things and they stumble? You know, the music they they they put in the store, does that have an impact on on the the the the the amount of money people spend? There's there's a lot of of things behind the scenes, and what I see is there's a lack of commentary on this. You know?

15:11 Caterton buys Solid Core. Great. Who's doing the analysis on what was the EBITDA? Was this good? What does this mean for the rest of the industry? Is this gonna mean things are gonna trade higher? Things are gonna trade lower? What is Caterton's exit strategy on this? What is the growth strategy on this? Any other industry, if GE did something or IBM did something or or Macy's did something, we turn on CNBC, and they'd be pontificating about these things for for hours and hours because this is a largely publicly held, privately held, sorry, privately held sector. We don't know very much, and that's why I'm partnering with and this is gonna be, look, somewhat this you gotta be careful what you ask for. This is what the industry is asking for, so I'm gonna deliver it.

15:52 Partnering with with with data companies, credit card companies, companies that are pinging cell phone towers, we're gonna have a level of data now that is gonna provide transparency into what are people spending. So what what modalities are trending? What brands are trending? Where are people spending their money? So there's gonna be less guessing as to what's working and not working. We're gonna be able to provide that. Some people are not gonna like that because they're able to hide it behind the guys of, hey. I'm gonna tell you whatever I wanna tell you, and it's up to you. So so, just rewind you for a second here. I'm happy to to officially announce that I'm available, as Integrity Square to provide you with these deal summaries as under your hood of, like, tell me actually not just like this company acquired this company and, like, you know, this management team staying on. Like, tell me actually, like, give me the inner workings of the deal. Like, how does it was this priced? You know, whether that's a rumor or based on estimates. Tell me why they're doing the deal. Did they take that financing out to do the deal? Are they looking to go public? And and basically, like, take one of your reporters, and then I'll and team up with us. And I'll give you, like, the metrics. Like, when does this thing fall, you know, in in all the last years? You know, why somebody paying 11 times for a Planet Finish Area Developer when the last year was done at eight and a half times? Like, well, they had a lot more territory. They had a prototype generating next to a hundred and $50 of cash flow. And, you know, it's in this market, not this market. So I'm happy to do that on on record. And, you know, if we don't do it, we'll just edit it out later. So big deal. No. But I I I I love that idea, and and

17:25 I think that's what we want more of. And I think that if if you ask me what is what is ATM gonna look like in second half of twenty five and and '26, it's more of that. I call it, you know, the ATM Pro or the ATM Plus. It it it's providing that level of data and that level of sophistication because I think that the industry is asking me for it, and the industry wants it. So let's see. Let's see if we provide it, how they consume it, and what they do with it. This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast. We are partnered up with a company called Higher Dose, higher dose dot com. They are the leader in workout recovery products, infrared technology, LED light masks, neck enhancers, and other products such as PEMF mats and sauna blankets.

18:15 If you have not gotten on the workout recovery train yet, your time and your stop is now. You gotta get these products in there before these workout recovery and spas end up saturating your market, having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations for $200 per month where they're paying 39 to you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery if we are already the authority in workouts. Higher dose, check it out, is a wholesale code, and we look forward to helping you augment your products and services to meet the demands of your members. And, hey, let's get people happy, healthy, and sweating, and the recovery should be just as good as the workout.

19:03 Okay. So in closing here, give us a little bit of, you know, high level tops and waves on the event that's gonna happen, in New York. You know, my team gets mad at me for for for using terms like this, and it it's probably you always wanna be, underselling, overdeliver, but I I have this vision. You know? It's funny. I again, I'm I'm taking a lot of liberty here. Is there there's, like, a famous quote or whatever. Disney, Walt took took his friend into the forest and said, what do you see? What do you mean? What are sassy trees? What are you seeing? He goes, I see the largest amusement park in the world. I I kinda have this vision. It's so it's so clear in my mind of, like, a Davos meets YPO meets Sun Valley for this industry a a day. And we and and and we teased it out a little bit in January at NASDAQ where you saw CEOs sitting in the audience. You saw big players on stage, everyone in a suit. You saw no one's selling to each other, people communicating, you know, and and staying there for nine hours throughout the day. And I'm like, okay.

20:06 This is a sophisticated audience that's learning from each other, peer to peer networking, pre pre competitive collaboration, and they loved it. So I have this vision of bringing best speakers from around the world. Mhmm. Not just from our our, as you would say, the halo industry, but from outside industry so we all could learn. But being very, very intentional in how I curate this this information because if people are gonna come three, four, five people deep as an organization, what a founder wants, what a CTO wants, what a CFO wants, what the head of franchising wants, what the head of procurement wants is very different. So we're we're spending so much time to ensure that we are programming content that's been aligned with all that. Then we're gonna have our recovery lounge, which is part experiential and also part a place where people are gonna do their meetings. Because, hey, maybe you and I wanna sit down and, and put on these compression boots and and talk for thirty minutes. Then we're gonna have an expo. This is not to be confused with the trade show. This is not a place where people are gonna be bringing, you know, tons and tons of product discovery. You know, that's that's why HFA's and the FEMO's exist. But innovation, let's bring the best product you have, or let's let's this is your meeting place for the next two days, and we're gonna we're gonna try to do everything we can to this needs to be the CES. This needs to be once a year.

21:26 Everyone's like, this is where the the money goes to to to congregate, to meet new concepts, to, you know, to potentially meet potential, you know, to find investment opportunities. This is where we go to learn. This is where people go to collaborate. This is where I go to discover new products, meet with new vendors. People are gonna be announcing. We have some proprietary research that's gonna be dropping. We're we're working with major consulting firms on on some data. We're working with data firms on on some stuff. My goal is that everyone as many people as possible use this June data as hey. As just the way at CES, they dropped something new there. People are gonna be dropping research and announcements around this. I'm really trying to get everyone to come together and make this, and it's bigger than us. Right? We're gonna have a lot of the moderators or from other, from other media outlets. This is not just about ATN. This is about bringing this entire industry up and getting exposure, not do it through our platform or be a conduit to get exposure for our industry and other platforms that maybe wouldn't be covering it.

22:26 And I think if we do that, what do they say? At the top, you collaborate. At the bottom, you compete. So let let's think about Yeah. Let let's think about collaboration. Yep. That's great. We speak in our language and, and and appreciate you devoting your time and efforts here because we think it's fruitful, and there's a clear opportunity and frustrations that that have not been solved. From a standpoint of us getting involved, just to our audience, we're gonna be at the show, be sponsoring, one of the the programs there. Hopefully, there's a a halo, you know, banner that people start to resonate as as Ed's been referencing. You know, try to pull this together under one acronym that that fits for everyone. Also, we should introduce you to higher dose, David, if you can do that, to potentially be a sponsor. And also in the recovery lounge, we've got, some things there and also a sponsor for you guys, you know, longer term. And, you know, look forward to collaborating with you here, and, I think it's big, and we're excited. So thanks for coming on and, telling our audience what you guys are up to. No. I appreciate it, man. It's it's, it it's exciting times, and, I appreciate all your support. You got it.